The online platform X has sparked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
